


Warm, Gentle, Cold, Rough

by QuizzicalQuinnia



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 10:39:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18754762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuizzicalQuinnia/pseuds/QuizzicalQuinnia
Summary: Jaime reflects while in Brienne's bed. Remembering, suffering, wondering.





	Warm, Gentle, Cold, Rough

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glamafonic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glamafonic/gifts).



> Sometimes, weird things happen when my fingers are on a keyboard, and this is one of those things. I NEVER write show canon! WTF?!?!!?! Also, I have not yet read ANY of the fic this week, and I'm quite sure that many of us are covering the same territory. If I've accidentally written something similar to anyone else's work, it's entirely a coincidence!
> 
> Unplanned, un-beta'd entirely, slammed out in one weird-mooded night. 
> 
> For Glam, because she so dearly wanted porn in chat this week. It's...not porn? I'm so sorry!

 

It is at once entirely familiar and startlingly new, this thing that has consumed him.

The beams on the ceiling are barely darkened by damp. Even her small chamber was given life again, burnt, abandoned, usurped, reclaimed, restored. The dead did not touch this place. He couldn’t bear to watch her sleep where the dead had been, dripping their black terror.

He knows what it is to want. He has memories of wanting, flickering through his mind like streaks of lightning in the sky, some desperate some demanding. Most, cruel.

He knows what it is to love. Now. Not cruel. Not painful at all yet more painful than it ever was. He wants to weep at the relief of it finally released within himself. He wants to weep from it tearing through his heart, a mortal wound.

The furs around him are heated by their bodies. She is so close. His fingers twitch.

He feels her still. The feather press of her lips against his. The velvet of her skin as he crushed her to him, soft, so soft. He knew how soft she would be. She’s held him against her bare breast before. Then, when he could barely think at all, he thought anyway how soft she was when she should be tough as her armor. Sturdy and unyielding. Cold. Rough.

Warm. Gentle.

He has carried these things with him for years. In the night, they would come to him without permission. He had shouted at them in his head, refusing them, rejecting them. Warm. Gentle. Her arms cradling him like a mother, but not at all like a mother. Like a lover. Not his lover. Cold. Rough. He had never been held after Joanna Lannister was gone.

Other memories had rushed in since he’d mounted the horse as black as his mood and ridden north. The memories he’d also buried in shrouds of regret, that had turned into longing at some point he could not define. Perhaps when he had seen her again. He’d thought himself safe from her forever.

Her fingers brushing his over the hilt of the sword. His hand resting on hers as she nearly threatened a man with cutlery. The warmth of her body in the entrance to his tent, so close to him. His back against hers on a horse for days and days. He thinks that was when something happened between them. He hadn’t known it, she hadn’t known it, he’s certain. But when they next were parted and tied to those trees, he’d so quickly determined that hearing her suffer the unimaginable he’d been truly startled. He’d lost the most important part of himself for it.

There is no regret. His hand is long decayed, food for worms. The most important part of himself is still here. Just different. No longer attached to his body.

He had not been gentle. He does not regret that, either. It had been too much, he thinks. It was not that he came to her _knowing_. He’s sure that he had no idea what he was doing beyond _do something_. She’d looked back at him. It was her eyes. They’d caught the firelight.

Her long fingers had brushed against his throat as she undid the laces of his shirt. There is no clear memory after that of much beyond her skin slowly, so slowly bared as she was bold. He remembers that he could not understand how she could want him, but she did. He does not have to understand to know it.

The furs sliding against his hand and his knees as he fell to the bed, with her under him. The taste of her mouth, opening to him, and he was so eager. He knows exactly why he can barely remember it, though it is so short a time before. The inside of her thigh, more strength than he expects though he should, smooth, silk, wanting. Brushing against his hip. Warm. Gentle. It undid him.

Her breathing is even now, so at peace. He hopes. He knows she sleeps and is not pretending. Her shoulders lift so slightly, then descend. Her heel brushes his foot. He feels rocked by it, this meaningless, inadvertent contact that means everything.

They had sparred, he thinks. Combat without violence. He had not expected this, so he had no expectations of her. He thinks he might have assumed her to be frightened, her gentleness made timid by him. She was not. She had wanted him. Her fingers had skated over his back, his neck, into his hair, and she’d made him look at her, and she’d examined his face. She’s asked him so many questions with only her eyes. He’d answered them all with only his eyes. It was then that he had never wanted anything more than he’d wanted her.

He questions now, is that truth. How could it be, when he is who he is, and has done what he’s done. It is truth. He realizes this with a stab of pain that makes him almost sick. It has all come undone now, his years of such careful control. Years of being split in two, his self all his life warring with blood and screaming against his self after her. His true self is hers. She is the only one who has known it.

He wants her again and again and always. He had thought it was supposed to be a balm perhaps, a scratch to an itch that, once eased, is put away again for a time. It always was so. This is how he understands what has been and what now is.

She had arched her neck as he’d come into her. A pale, smooth column glowing in the firelight. Under his lips, his breath against her skin. She’d kissed his temple like an afterthought, an impulse unaware. She had not seemed to feel pain, but then she was a knight. She had always been so, without his gift that had, then in other firelight, been the only way he could tell her of his love. He would die. She would, too. They had not.

He’d learned her body as he’d learned her mind. Slowly, teasingly, sometimes with kind gestures and sometimes with taunting. She’d whispered his name against his cheek, and he had understood then, that this too was something only he could give her. Any knight could have knighted her. It wasn’t even that they had thought her unworthy. They had not thought at all. He had not thought of it himself. It is now a shame he bears, though he believes he has always been too fixed on the immediacy of their encounters to worry about that. Until they were going to die when all he’d wanted was to see her happy for the briefest moment in time before the world ended.

Only he could have taken her like he had. Any man could have claimed her. They had not thought of her at all, unless they were mocking or men like that Wildling who wanted an experience not a person. A novelty, not the gift of beautiful eyes glancing shyly and boldly at once. Only him. Only he sees her.

It had been too fast. He knows. It had been too much. She’d held him like a lover as he’d spilled himself in her. She’d so tentatively brushed his hair from his forehead. He’d wrapped himself around her, not letting her body cool, not letting her slip away. She could bear his weight and did not seem to mind.

She sleeps still. He wants. Still. The light of the fire is strong. He is on his back, pained, and he glances at her once more, the back of her neck. Her softly waving hair. It hurts. He is who he is and has done what he has done. She is good. She is so good she makes him almost believe the gods are real, but he knows how cruel they really are, and creatures that cruel are called men. Like him.

He wants her, still. He loves her. It happened slowly, over years. Against himself, despite himself. He cannot be hers. She is good, and he is a man who was supposed to die. She is atonement entirely unearned. Her body has given it to him freely without any request. She loves him. He knows. It’s not that he doesn’t deserve her love. He doesn’t deserve even to live. Her one mistake is this. Him. He let it happen because he was too weak to turn his back on the want in her eyes. He hates himself for it.

But he loves her. His fingers reach for her against his will. He should leave. He should be dead. He sees her and knows her and only wants her against him once more, inside her, with her, he wants her to love him. He thinks he has never felt this kind of pain. He has thought that before, at times, from loss. A future, a hand, a son, a brother, a father, a daughter, a son, a sister. He knows what kind of man he is for feeling that this pain, as he lies in her bed after having her, is worse than them all. She is not lost. It is the haunting of her loss. That she could be lost to him, that she will. It’s certain. Someday, he will lose her even if the cruel gods allow him to be loved by her for a time.

He should leave. Spare her. Spare himself. It’s too late, he knows. There is nothing that can be done about his love. It is hers now. Warm, gentle. His.

He begins to grow distant from himself as his body succumbs to the need for sleep. Yet those little sparks of thought that fire so slowly now remain, reminding. He knows just what he has done in ruining her. He knows just what kind of man he is for regretting nothing. Cold, rough. Hers.

 


End file.
